Aquariums or aqua systems have been maintained since antiquity. These aqua systems range from the professional and industrial types used in places like the New England Aquarium, to mid-size ones in professional buildings, restaurants, pet shops or homes, to the small bookshelf ones in most children's rooms. Generally, most aqua systems have two components: an enclosure housing the organism (s) or inhabitants of the aqua system and the machinery maintaining the enclosure environment. The enclosure can be simple or sophisticated with other built-in enclosures for coral beds and/or other flora and fauna. The machinery maintaining the enclosure environment, generally, includes components such as, a pump, a filter, a light source, and a timer to regulate the light. The machinery of sophisticated and automated aqua systems generally has more components such as chillers, heaters, secondary and internal pumps, fish feeders and water replenishment devices, to maintain the aquatic environment.
Some monitoring systems for aqua systems are known in the art. Traditionally, such monitoring systems evaluate end parameters such as the water temperature and pH of the aqua system. When in operation, such monitoring systems typically sound an alert when a stated end parameter exceeds a programmed threshold. Generally, in response to the alert, service personnel must quickly remedy the situation to prevent further deviation from the appropriate parameter threshold value. While such traditional monitoring systems are adequate for certain aqua system applications, monitoring, control and system analysis of intermediate control devices, coupled with prompt alert and response to the alert, can be difficult due to factors such as cost of sensors for intermediate control devices, location of the service personnel, response of the service personnel and the nature of the reported problem.
Another shortcoming of such traditional systems is that it is often difficult to use real-time monitoring and dynamic control of the intermediate control devices because, outside a limited range of operating conditions, the intermediate device itself may contribute to deviation in end parameters. For example, the traditional aqua systems usually use unmonitored or uncontrolled intermediate control devices. Because these control devices are integrated to other control devices, and thus contribute to the monitored end parameters, there is a need to monitor these intermediate control devices to better detect impending deviations of the end parameter. Furthermore, since the intermediate control devices are usually integrated, there is the need to monitor and control them, thus an isolated failure of an individual intermediate control device should not be allowed to cascade throughout the aquatic environment with probable consequences to the overall aquatic ecosystem. Monitoring the intermediate control devices may produces outputs that may be used in other system-wide applications and analysis.
Lastly, many traditional monitoring systems, such as those described above, are constrained to simple aqua systems maintenance tasks such as monitoring the water temperature and pH. Such traditional systems are not well suited for monitoring and controlling sophisticated and automated systems that require extensive system analysis, system anomaly analysis, and predictive failure diagnostics. Examples of extensive system anomaly analysis include but may not be limited to complex tasks such as automatic water replenishment, water circulation, and detection of opacity in reduction of the viewing glass or plastic. Examples of predictive failure diagnostics include monitoring and controlling early warning detection systems, measuring flow rates from system drain valves, alerting the owners to possible failures before such failures are detrimental to the aqua system and sending real-time recorded acoustic profile of the aquatic environment to a remote monitoring terminal to diagnose a potential problem.
While the traditional monitoring and controlling systems for aqua systems represent, in some instances, useful tools in this field, there remains a need in the art to: (1) provide cost effective, improved extensive system monitoring and controlling capabilities; (2) provide improved system monitoring and alert systems by monitoring the intermediate control devices for likely failures; (3) provide for continuously adjusting system parameters to compensate for the dynamic aquatic environment conditions based on the system analysis; (4) provide predictive failure diagnostics to alert users of possible failures before such failures occur; and (5) provide for continuously adjusting system parameters to compensate for the dynamic aquatic environment conditions based on the predictive failure diagnostics.